Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Yesterday’s post about horny honkers prompted some great comments, including the following from regular blog reader Claire Dawn:

At home in Barbados, guys used to make a sort of catcall (Seets) and say, "My friend..." and start their pick up lines from there. I always wondered if a single girl ever fell for a guy seetsing.

The comment got me thinking about pickup lines and how they vary from culture to culture.

When I was in my early 20s, I taught English in Venezuela. Most students were roughly the same age I was, and teachers were encouraged to make the lessons relevant to normal American life. Song lyrics, curse words, and popular slang were all fair game.

Hanging with my students in Venezuela circa 1997.

So were pickup lines.

I can’t remember how I got the idea for the lesson, but I do remember explaining the term “cheesy” and making sure the students understood that most pickup lines aren’t particularly effective. It turned into an excellent cultural exchange, with everyone trying to outdo each other using terrible pickup lines in multiple languages.

“Here’s a good one,” I explained to the class. “And by ‘good’ I mean ‘don’t say this unless you want to be slapped.’”

I had their attention.

“You can approach a woman in a bar and say, ‘Wow, that blouse is very becoming on you.’ Then you pause for effect and smile. ‘If I were on you, I’d be coming, too.’”

There was a long silence during which I realized I was going to have to add a new term to my students’ vocabulary.

But they were game, and the rest of the lesson went swimmingly.

I soon forgot about it, and that round of students went on to pass their exams and move on to other teachers who probably employed more appropriate methods of instruction. A few months later, I ran into one of my former students in the library.

“Hey, Julio!” I called. “I hear you’re doing great in level eight.”

“Yes, teacher. Thank you very much.”

“I like your new haircut. It looks very nice.”

“Thank you teacher,” he said, blushing a little. “That dress is very becoming on you.”

I beamed, completely oblivious. “Thank you, Julio.”

“Teacher, if I were on you—”

I didn’t give him the chance to finish, though I did offer him a solid pat on the back for his good memory. To this day, I live in fear of Julio roaming the Venezuelan countryside using that line on unsuspecting women in bars.

What’s the worst pickup line you’ve ever heard? On the flip side, can you think of a good one that might actually work? Please share!

Ugh...got me cringing just thinking about it. Due to feeble memory and too much time spent with Redbull/vodka, I can't recall specific pick-up lines. More than anything, I think the times a guy's sent over a drink in anticipation of the drink-receiver dropping her skirt and sauntering over, irritates me more than anything. Haha..

The best pick-up was when a guy came up to me and greeted me as if I was an old friend. "Kathy, how are you? You look great!"

It took until the time I'd gotten done explaining I was not, in fact, his friend Kathy, and he'd apologized for the mistake, and then offered to buy me a cup of coffee as an apology for the misunderstanding, that it finally dawned on me that there probably never was a Kathy.

"If I told you that you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"

Great idea for a survey, Tawna! @Patrick Alan: When my hubby got a convertible, he teased me that it was such a chick magnet the women would be throwing themselves at him. I laughed and pointed at infant car-seat in the back.

When I was single, I had a company dinner at PF Chang's. We had excellent service and the cute manager kept walking by to say hi. When we got our fortunes, mine said, "Someone with green eyes admires you." And the manager just happened to be by when I read it aloud. He paused and said, "Actually, they're blue." As we were leaving, he handed me his business card and asked me to come back the next week for a free lunch. LOL

My favorite was one I heard about a cowboy in the Let 'er Buck Room at the Pendleton Roundup, offering girls temporary tattoos. If they accepted, he offered to apply it for them. And if they agreed, he said, "I have to lick it first."

I have heard many pick up lines like that before. Particularly the "great shirt, it would look better on my floor" type.

the WORST one i have ever heard was two weeks ago. I am cutting and pasting the following from my facebook entry:

Just been on emergency dash for stockings. Braved Riverlink alone. Made it out alive. However heard the worst pick up line EVER.dropkick boy "Hey Dal, R u a hooker? I am. I'm the best hooker in Ipswich." As he ceremoniously air punches the air pretending to be a boxer. What made it even funnier was i had heard him practicing it with his dropkick sidekick moments earlier. The sad part was the girl listened.*sigh*

If you can understand the idiocy of this boy then you may realise what a crap pickup line this is. Fancy calling a girl a prostitute to try and pick her up. AND pretend that you are a boxer AND SHE LISTENED.

I spent a few months in Costa Rica and each morning I had to walk a mile to school. My route would often take me past groups of hairy, sweaty men shouting cat calls in Spanish. They must have mistaken my death glares for attraction because the "Aye! Muneca!" shouts continued until I left. When I got back to the States, a part of me felt indignant that construction workers, businessmen, and inmates didn't so much as look my way. Some nights I still hear them shouting at my gringo behind and wonder what could have been.

This was more of an evaluation than a pick-up line (I think), but it gets points for straightforwardness: My friend and I were walking to the beach in Fiji and a man leaned out of his passing car and yelled "I love your breasts!"

Who the @#$% are you?

I'm an author of quirky romantic comedies for Montlake Publishing and Sourcebooks, including Making Waves, which was nominated for contemporary romance of the year by RT Book Reviews. I also write interactive fiction capers for Coliloquy and the steamy, heartwarming Front and Center series for Entangled Publishing. I'm represented by Michelle Wolfson of Wolfson Literary Agency. Email me at tawnafenske at yahoo dot com.